EP48: Book Shop After Dark: Bad cars, great books (and not so great)

Live from the Book Shop: John Updike's Ghost

With car issues in the rearview mirror, it's JUG After Dark and Hannah and Sam are feeling frisky even though it's Bad Car Summer, even providing a little primer on not paying Jeff Bezos money. After that, Sam loves "The Impossible Fortress," an ode to 1980s nerd culture (and Vanna White), and it turns out it's actually been released by a U.S. publisher. Then Hannah really likes "The House of Doors," recently long-listed for the Booker Prize, and out on October 17, which features Somerset Maugham in Malaysia. Sam is less than thrilled with the Martha McPhee memoir, though, possibly because he is not the target audience. Hannah thought it might be good, but she was wrong. Luckily, Josh Cook's new "Art of Libromancy" is a killer new collection of essays about the selling of books and how readers work. If you know Porter Square Books, you need to read this. We're giving it to our booksellers. And Sam loved local Rebekah Bergman's "The Museum of Human History," which he describes as a mashup of Emily St. John Mandel and Murakami. Don't miss this one. Hannah tempers his excitement by noting it's getting late, she needs to ride a bike in the morning.